World Rugby, you have got to stop this. How on earth do you explain the performances of Angus Gardner and Ben Whitehouse last night? Last night in the Springboks vs England game in the 2022 Autumn Nations Series we witnessed what happens when you put a incompetent ref and combine it with an equally incompetent TMO, the results were astonishing. The amount of mistakes and miscalls they made was incredible, I don't even know where to start.

Let's just start with the 2 tries. With the Kurt-Lee Arendse try, how was that try not reviewed? First off we have a clear case of blocking where Arendse changes his lane after seeing where the England chaser is, which blocks him just enough for Willemse to step outside and create a break. Then Willemse makes a very questionable pass that looked forward to me. So we've got 2 incidents that would've meant no try to SA, yet they didn't even officially review it. Angus asked the TMO to check it quickly and within 3 seconds Ben Whitehouse responded that it was okay. Such a big moment in the game, the TMO takes 3 seconds to award I try. I'm not convinced he even checked the replays. Even if we're only looking at the Willemse pass, you can see the direction of his hands are forward, and would explain why the pass looked forward. Yet, there was no review.

But let's skip ahead, let's look at Eben Etzebeth's try. Again, how on earth does that not get reviewed? Let's forget about the sealing off before the try, let's just focus on the try itself. The ball gets lost forward by Faf de Klerk, Eben is offside and off his feet, yet he picks the ball up despite being offside and off his feet, he then proceeds to score. There could've been 3 penalties against Eben but instead the ref didn't see any of it, same with the TMO. Now the question is, how on earth can Ben Whitehouse be a TMO if he clearly has no idea about the laws? What the hell.

The only good thing they did that entire game was the red card for Thomas du Toit, there was no defending that. It was a reckless tackle and they dealt with it correctly. But in saying that, then there were 2 other incidents where Bongi takes a shoulder to the head, he appeals to the ref, the ref shuts him down. Siya Kolisi then goes to the ref, tells him about it. And Angus just tells him he didn't see it, so unless the TMO says something he can't do it. Which is lies of course. Anyhow, then we have Ben Whitehouse doing nothing. He didn't event check it. Then there was also the last moment of the game where the England lock comes from the side of a ruck and lifts Jaden Hendrikse by his lower limb, and then flips him through the horizontal. Now this happens directly in front of the ref, and he ignores it. Only 30 seconds later after the AR tells him about it, he blows his whistle. Then to make it worse, they don't even check it on replay. It should've been a yellow at least, but they just did nothing.

This was probably one of the worst officiated games of the year. Games like this shows why Rassie did what he did. This can't continue. Eddie Jones should rather fight with Rassie than against him with this issue. Coaches seriously need to start working together and calling out World Rugby's protocols regarding match officials, else we're never going to see improvement

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